


A Most Beloved Sister

by haveloved



Category: Home Fires (UK TV)
Genre: Gen, Home Fires 2016 Summer Fic Exchange
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-12
Updated: 2016-08-12
Packaged: 2018-07-29 18:26:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7694788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/haveloved/pseuds/haveloved
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An aunt’s marriage deemed calamitous by Richard and Jane Mayhew leaves their daughters discussing parents, class, love, and a lifetime of shared memories.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Most Beloved Sister

**Author's Note:**

> This piece was written for the Home Fires Fic Exchange on Tumblr; it was originally posted [here](http://fyhomefires.tumblr.com/post/148448487804/a-most-beloved-sister-fic-exchange). My prompt of choice was "Frances and Sarah - childhood." I aged the girls up a little and into adolescence, hoping to show them both as the children I imagine they'd been and the women we eventually see them become.
> 
> First of all, a huge thanks to Simon Block, Samantha Bond, and Ruth Gemmell–to Mr. Block for creating such amazing characters, and to Ms. Bond and Ms. Gemmell for bringing them to life. Even writing their younger versions, I had so much fun stepping into their shoes. Second, to Lina for organizing the exchange, and to Kristen for being my first reader–thank you both so much! My own sister–the Frances to my Sarah–has nothing to do with this, but has no idea how much she’s helped me understand sisterhood. And as ever, to Cait, who isn’t my biological sister but even better, my chosen one, and to Jane Austen–my title is borrowed from _Pride and Prejudice_ , and I owe to her my joy in writing sisters and women.

From a floor above, ears pressed to the wood, one could hear Jane Mayhew’s injured sniff. “Really, she should see that he isn’t _quite_ our sort.”

“She made her own bed, Jane. It isn’t as though we’ve received her in this house.”

“But there _will_ be talk. An _artist_ , Richard? It just isn’t to be borne!”

It was Frances who sighed, rolling onto her back; Sarah who looked at her questioningly. “As usual,” Frances grumbled. “It’s about them.”

 “Is it ever about anyone else?”

Sarah had a point. Frances stared up at the dust motes drifting down from the ceiling of her own room—directly above the parlor, the best spot for eavesdropping, the reason why Sarah isn’t in her own room despite that they’d been sent to bed an hour before.

“Sometimes I feel as though we could dress Cook in one of Mummy’s dresses, take down her hair, and have Father ask us just who our charming visitor is.”

Sarah’s laugh was almost outright, but became an unladylike snort just in time; better for their parents not to hear her through the same floorboards allowing them to eavesdrop. When they were children, eavesdropping had been understandable, if not excusable. Small bodies fitting easily into places they shouldn’t be, listening to things they shouldn’t be hearing… things their parents seemed to say without compunction in front of the servants, anyway, so why not listen in?

But twelve and fourteen years old? On their way to becoming _young ladies_ , if not already there… eavesdropping is just another thing that _isn’t to be borne._

“Do you remember when Mummy caught us playing with Gordon’s son?” Sarah shuddered at the memory.

“ _‘Whatever do you think you were doing playing with that grubby boy?’_ ” Older, bolder, Frances mimicked Mrs. Mayhew’s haughty tone perfectly. “As though he hadn’t grown up in the same house as us. As though he wasn’t potentially going to be taking orders from us in a few years; she wouldn’t be calling him grubby _then_ , because heaven forbid she see muck on even the stable boy…”

There was a certain righteous fury on Frances’ face Sarah was learning to recognize. She knew, the more she saw it, that it was the same fury Frances had always had simmering in her—the same fury Frances had exercised at neighborhood boys pulling her or Sarah’s curls, or cheating at childhood games—just channeled somewhere else. Injustices such as these passed with age; there were different injustices to be furious about now. Injustices like Father and Mummy barely glancing at their own servants, like those servants’ children going with so little education while girls like them, raised merely to be decorative, receive plenty (but not university; heaven _forbid_ university).

“… can’t see the girls, of course,” Jane was saying, Sarah realized, when Frances abruptly tipped her ear back against the wood, fury pulsing ever stronger on her fine features. “The _ideas_ it will give them… worse than a novel, a penniless artist snaring a Mayhew daughter…”

“She’ll send gifts at Christmas. She always does.”

“Then we’ll simply say she won’t be any longer. December is quite a few months from now, Richard; she might not even have the money to spend on them, then, if this is the sort she’s chosen to take up with…”

“This is ridiculous,” Frances mumbled, finally getting to her feet and brushing off her pyjamas. “As though we don’t know women make unwise marriages from those same novels—and who’s to say it’s unwise because he hasn’t got the bloody _money_ to satisfy them?”

“Frances!” The swear was a little much, even if she did generally agree with Frances—Mummy and Father had always had an element of the ridiculous about them.

Frances shook her head, red curls flying, then reached out a hand to help her sister off the floor. “Come. Sleep in here. No sense in them hearing you sneaking back to your room.”

Secretly, she was pleased—the chance to eavesdrop with Frances had been too good to resist, not that she would have these days, as Frances found herself with less and less time to spend with a sister two years younger. The chance to spend a night with her, talking quietly in the same bed… there was a part of her that felt like a child again.

Frances let her climb into bed first, leaving her pressed against the wall. She thought sometimes there was a reason for it, stretching back to when they were children and Sarah was much smaller, more prone to injury should she roll out of the bed. Whether she realized it or not, Frances had an impulse to protect her, especially when Sarah knew Frances always had a tough time getting comfortable closer to the edge of the bed.

For a while they lay there in silence, red hair mingled with mouse brown on the pillow, their parents’ voices gradually fading away. The air was heavy, the night still, far from the thunderstorms or moonless nights it had generally taken for them to share a bed prior to this. Maybe there didn’t need to be requirements. Maybe it was enough that they wanted to spend the time together.

“Do you remember the time Poppy brought a mouse in?” Sarah asked, biting her lip against a laugh. “You wouldn’t sleep in here for a week.”

“Nor would you have if you knew there could be dead vermin in a corner!”

“It was _dead_ , Frances; it was hardly going to reanimate.”

“Which means it was still a _corpse_. A furry, half-eaten corpse—might I remind you that when you found a spider web in the nursery Miss Grey had to uproot our lessons—”

“Spiders might be poisonous!”

“Mice carry disease!”

“As though a dead mouse Poppy brought in would carry the bubonic plague… should I start feeling grateful none of us were struck down?”

“Maybe that you or I weren’t. I hardly think Mummy can be struck down by anything. Not before she’d arranged a state funeral in her finest dress.”

“Have herself buried next to Jane Austen?”

“She’d probably demand the plaque be inscribed with her name as well…”

The two of them quieted, momentarily sober—no matter their feelings about their parents as they grew older, even a joke about their eventual deaths was too much to bear.

It was Sarah who broke the silence, unusually enough—it was Frances who did the talking for the two of them, Sarah who did the listening.

“I’ve missed this.”

“You think I haven’t?” Frances seemed stunned, tipping her face to the side to have a better look at her sister’s face.

“That wasn’t what I said… I wouldn’t think that of you. Just that… you’ve had less time, lately. You’ll have even less in the years to come.”

“And so will you—you’re only two years off…”

“Two years and a world of difference. You’ll have a flock of suitors—you’re practically Elizabeth Bennet. You speak well; they’ll be charmed.”

“Or intimidated.”

“Most are, by you.”

“You seem to think they won’t want you. Men want someone who will listen. Listen and not talk, preferably, but that isn’t you… it shouldn’t be you. Promise you’ll keep that in mind.”

“I suppose I’ll have to. I’ve had enough experience doing that with you.”

Frances laughed, bemused—they both knew who they were, perhaps too well. “Should we stop talking and get to bed?”

“Perhaps… but not yet.” 

The bemused laugh became a smile—soft, indulgent. “Then not yet.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> I hope everyone who's read this far enjoyed the piece. Feedback is always appreciated!


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